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Woo, completed on normal (never bothered with easy) - the dual Pegasus someone mentioned further up can flatten the boss pretty quickly! 40% evasion keeps the superweapon at bay decently well - I didn't have cloak or teleporter.

First time reaching the boss on Normal for me, in the Rock cruiser A. About four times, I was flying on less than four points of hull, and one of those times was with one point. That was when I jumped into a beacon next to a star, and it took longer than one solar flare to charge my FTL drive. It was sheer luck that the flare didn't hit a room with a system in it, because that would have killed me. During that time I was also being assaulted by a Rock vessel, but fortunately they only had a laser and a bomb. I was actually one Artemis missile away from destroying the enemy ship, but I decided to get outta there quickly, and not take another chance with a solar flare.

The repair arm I got as a parting gift from a surrendering enemy ship helped a lot as well. It doesn't happen often that an enemy ship will give you a weapon or augmentation, so I always take it, even if it's stealth weapons and I don't have a cloak.

Finally got a good Mantis ship game going. Bulk up some engines and then shields, cross your fingers as you away team takes out the crew of the other ship. If they have no med bay, you can small bomb the weapon room. I have a healing bomb also, but level 2 manti slice and dice quite well. Just got my last crew member, I have enough now to send 2 teams of 2 manti over. But usually only need the pair. Also go tEngi Med Dispersal (Seems you can get it on other ships) from a friendly Engi that I helped.

One thing I found you can cheese to get your Shield Mastery up is while in combat, drop the power of your shields and put it back in. You get a tick of experience for every shield bubble regenerated. I had a manti ship completely destroyed, with one manti at 20hp trying to repair everything. I was waiting for his O2 to drain to get the achievement. During that I got a full bar of shield mastery on my Zoltan.

Well, manti is wrong because the singular is not mantus, and mantii is wrong because the singular is not mantius, but if you really wanted to use an exotic pluralization you can go with mantes, which is the least wrong of the bunch.

Holy crap. I did it. I actually won on Normal, with a paltry Engi cruiser A with the modest armament of an Ion Blast II, Heavy Laser I, Small Bomb, two Anti-Ship I and one Defense drone I. I only had a level 4 drone bay, so two of them could be active at a time. I also had a level 2 cloak, 3 shield blips, level 4 engines, level 5 weapons, but no teleporter, and only stealth weapons plus heal bots as augmentations. My crew was the original two engies as pilot and shields guy (the human had been lost to spiders), rockman on weapons, zoltan on engines, and an additional rescued engi for misc repairs.

The only things I bought from shops were the stealth weapons, rockman, zoltan, and defense drone, in that order.

My tactics for the flagship were roughly the same across all three stages. I'd point the ion blast and the laser to the missile launcher, and the small bomb to the shields, and hope that my barrage would get rid of enough shield blips for my drones to get some shots in. And that they did. Once the missile launcher was out of order, I'd deactivate the defense drone and put the other anti-ship drone online, and that tore through the ship pretty quickly.

The second stage went the same, only I targeted the drone bay with the ion blast. The defense drone shot down every incoming boarding drone but one, but by the time that happened, I'd already destroyed the flagship for the second time.

Stage three was fairly predictable, as you'd expect. Two anti-ship drones took down the super-shield very quickly, and there were only two enemy crewmembers who were able to board before I bombed the teleporter. I took a bit of damage when I failed to cloak for the superweapon, which took a bar off the drone bay and the engines, but both of those had redundancy upgrades, and before the ship was able to recharge its super-shield, the fight was over.

One thing I found you can cheese to get your Shield Mastery up is while in combat, drop the power of your shields and put it back in. You get a tick of experience for every shield bubble regenerated. I had a manti ship completely destroyed, with one manti at 20hp trying to repair everything. I was waiting for his O2 to drain to get the achievement. During that I got a full bar of shield mastery on my Zoltan.

I quite routinely cheese up my xp on all crew stations. Just find an enemy who can never penetrate your shields, then set any weapons you have that'll never do any damage to autofire and go afk for 15 minutes. When you get back you'll find all your crew fully levelled.

I figure boarding team is a must to secure more scraps and repairs are best just left out till you hit stage 7. Making it to the Last Stand would auto-repair the hull by 25% more or less. Good enough for me. To me, the best ship is probably the Red-Tail with the good spread of crew and 4x basic lasers as starting weapon. This ship has very little weakness.

If you lost around 50% of your hull or more pre stage 5, something is horribly wrong with your build.

If you lost around 50% of your hull or more pre stage 5, something is horribly wrong with your build.

Or you just had horrible luck and encountered a ship that sent two drones after you while ioning your shields in the middle of an asteroid field. (Fortunately, in my last game, that ship was me. Haha!) I don't see why a near-death experience should mean that your chances are ruined for the rest of the game.

Crap, I was this close to beating the boss for the first time, despite a couple mistakes in the away party management midway through the game. The silly move was stopping to repair some slight damages after beating it 3 times. Engi cruiser with Ion II, Hull Laser II and S. Bomb, 2x Anti Ship I and Defense I drones.

This game is just so great ...when I get a lucky run and plenty of scrap. Totally lost track of time.